Candice Rainey learned the art of shopping for affordable designer pieces in Sin City, of all places. Turns out the buying game is just as thrilling—and self-defining—as anything else in town

Like many addictions, mine flourished in Las Vegas. My mother, father, and brother and I vacationed annually there from the time I was eight—yes, this is where my family, a foursome from Salt Lake City, came to bond. My dad, whose Rain Man penchant for numbers lent itself to blackjack, appreciated the then metropolitan thrum of Vegas. At the posh Desert Inn where we stayed, men wore suits and ties to dinner and the tables, but just outside on the Strip, good oldfashioned vulgarity held sway—low-stakes craps, saggy-kneed cocktail waitresses past their prime, the smell of cigarette smoke mixed with cheap whiskey—should my parents choose to indulge once they had sequestered my big brother and me in our room to watch movies and eat sundaes delivered by room service waiters. We continued our yearly pilgrimage to the land of eternal sleaze and glitz, and as the Strip changed from a money-cultured adult fantasyland to a family-friendly block punctuated by kitsch theme-park hotels, so did the purpose of our trips. At least for my mother and me.

Most Popular

By the time I was 23, Las Vegas had morphed into a shopping holy land. Monolithic hotels like the Bellagio and Caesars Palace housed luxury mini malls, their gleaming windows goading tourists in running sneakers and Bermuda shorts, pushing strollers down the marbled floors, to daydream how they might spend their fictitious jackpots. I was living in New York by then, working at a men's fashion magazine, and had come to realize that my former mountain-bound uniform of hemp necklaces and oversize alpaca sweaters made me look like a yokel next to the outright glamorous editors who dropped names of European designers as if they were extended family members. My new fascination with this elite tribe wasn't born strictly out of a desire for career advancement. I wanted to look like these people—effortlessly modern, broadcasting urbane cool. Without uttering a word, they seemed to possess a distilled sense of authority about the job, the city—hell, the world. My mother, who, despite growing up near an Air Force base in a remote Utah town, had always dressed with a snazzy sophistication (gravitating toward St. John knits and vintage gold Rolexes), was predictably tickled by my shift in attitude. But she knew that rarefied hipness costs money, of which I was making very little, and so she decided to use our family holiday that year to enlighten me in the ways of bargain hunting.

After flying in from New York, I met my family for a pre-noon, semiboozy lunch (who doesn't love Vegas?) but cut the meal short when the waitress tipped off my mother and me about a "once-in-a-lifetime" sale at Bellagio's Chanel boutique. A little tipsy but fortified by the uncut oxygen pumped into the casino, we beelined through the store's giant glass doors, which were flung open as if to invite passersby to lap up the concentrated smells of expensive leather and spiced perfume. A sales associate in black wool pants, a turtleneck, and a single string of pearls greeted us with smiling teeth. "Welcome. We're having a sale today. Let me know if there are any sizes I can get for you." My mom walked over to the rack of Chanel jackets, gliding her hand down the arm of a blackand- white checked one with silver thread running through the weave. Fumbling for the price tag, she tipped her glasses to the end of her nose and motioned to me with her hand like a crossing guard. "Fifty percent off," she whispered.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

"It's still too much," I said, mentally shuffling through the electricity, gas, and rent bills awaiting me at home.

"Your birthday is coming up. Maybe I can help you with it." I shook my head no but began rubbing the jacket's lapel between my thumb and forefinger. "Just try it on," my mom said, slipping it off the hanger. I stared at myself in the mirror, taking in the jacket's narrow cut and the three shiny silver buttons emblazoned with those storied double C's. There's a certain weight to a Chanel jacket—a wonderful heaviness that envelops you like futuristic armor, molding to every undulating curve of yourarm. I felt, for lack of a better term, like the shit. The sales associate who greeted us snuck up behind me. "I shouldn't be telling you this," she said quietly, "but this jacket is going to be marked down again sometime next week. Sixty percent off. That is, if it's still here, of course." I did the math in my head, my lips surely moving as I tried to carry the 1. "We're leaving Sunday," I announced a little desperately. "But could you ship it to me in New York? I mean, if I gave you my credit card over the phone."

"Of course," she said, smiling politely. "Again, that's if it's still here." I gave the woman my cell phone and work numbers, reiterating how she could reach me at any time. When we left the store, my mom offered to buy the jacket for my birthday and Christmas gifts—the only present I'd be receiving that year—knowing that I didn't have the do re mi to swing it, even at that price. Over the next three days I went out of my way to check on the jacket, trying nonchalantly to glance through the massive window as I walked by. It was always there but exposed on a nearly bare rack. Before leaving for the airport, I walked in one last time, noticing that Turtleneck wasn't around. I waited for a moment, until the salespeople were busy hovering around other customers, then coolly hid the jacket in between two dresses on a more densely populated rack. I'd bought myself a little more time, I hoped.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

I got the call on Wednesday afternoon while at work: "Hello, Candice, this is Chanel calling." The box arrived a week later at my apartment. I waded through the tissue paper and fished out my treasure, immediately throwing on the jacket over my coffee-stained T-shirt and ripped sweatpants, having just climbed out of bed. In the next few weeks I surprised myself at how easily I incorporated something so special into my everyday life, wearing it from my tiny cubicle to crammed downtown bars, not sweating it if I got caught in the rain or a little cigarette smoke drifted by. I never felt like I had to treat the jacket gingerly, as if it were crystal to be taken out only on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Most Popular

I'd hate to say that I relished the jacket with such gusto solely due to its reduced price (let's face it, even discounted Chanel is never cheap, literally and figuratively), but the fact that I'd gotten such a deal did have a fair amount to do with it. Even today when I slip it on, there's a pleasure that washes over me knowing it was a gamble to let the jacket sit there for nearly a week, beckoning other shoppers with its siren song, then calling Turtleneck's bluff and walking away with the spoils. It's a truism that's best summed up by Paul Newman's mustachioed hustler in Martin Scorsese's pool hall classic, The Color of Money: "A dollar won is twice as sweet as a dollar earned." Buying designer on sale delivers a rush similar to winning a big pot—your intelligence, skill, and instincts are validated by a tangible reward.

Experiencing that precise thrill has become a fixation of mine; my mom and I have gone so far as to plan our annual family Vegas trips around the July sales. In New York come September, lean-limbed ladies swaddled in cashmere hustle up and down Fifth Avenue in their ice-pick heels, snapping up cold-weather essentials before the temperature dips below 78 degrees, leaving tumbleweeds in their wake. I, on the other hand, wait monklike, squirreling away money, until early December, when numbers as bright as traffic lights flash markdowns—50 percent off!—from storefront windows. Over the past 11 years living here, I've become a groupie to a handful of stores (mostly in Brooklyn), where covetable Rick Owens ankle-length jersey dresses, slouchy Dries Van Noten knits, and billowy Ann Demeulemeester buttondowns hang patiently, boasting ever more inked-up price tags, waiting to be taken home like irresistible shelter kittens.

In case you're wondering, I'm not swimming in a sea of credit card debt nor surfing designer discount sites in my office when I should be working (I can't muster the same enthusiasm for the new wave of online flash sales—if I can't touch it, try it on, and take it home with me, there's no instant high), and I would never buy knockoffs, by the way. This isn't a shopping addiction per se, but I have become borderline obsessed. I still like being on the outskirts of the elite fashion bubble, a girl from the West whose father, a born negotiator, grew up frugal on a ranch in Wyoming and has since lived by some pretty sound fiscal gospel: Debt will ruin you; don't buy what you can't pay for in cash; people who flaunt their wealth are usually all hat and no cattle; an asking price is merely a suggestion. Bargain hunting has become a matter of pride, a way to dabble in a world of affluence and taste without completely sacrificing all the home-grown principles I still identify with.

A couple of years ago, our Vegas vacation had to be rescheduled for the end of August, when the sales had all but vanished. (My husband, who couldn't get the time off, wasn't the most popular guy on that trip.) With not a red slash in sight, I eyed a pair of strappy Givenchy stilettos. "Jennifer Aniston has those!" a saleswoman chirped in my ear. "What size are you?" I tried them on, angling my foot in different directions in front of the mirror. The shoes were the embodiment of what great fashion does so well—makes magic happen. Were my legs longer, did my hair just get blonder, my eyes bigger, my ass smaller? "Ammaaazzzingg," said the saleswoman. I glimpsed the price and cringed. I'd saved enough money to afford them, but I couldn't help question whether I belonged in them. "Should I put these on your card?" asked the saleswoman, interrupting my existential crisis with her hard sell. I buckled and forked over the plastic.

Those shoes are tucked away in the box they came in at the back of my closet. I pull them out for weddings and anniversary dinners but haven't had the guts to take them for a lap around the office or, God forbid, on the gum-ridden platforms of the subway. Their effect is still stunning, but whenever I slip them on, I feel a familiar flicker of guilt—for wearing them because they were so expensive, then for not wearing them enough because they were so expensive. Sometimes I wish I could be like those flawlessly dressed women on Fifth Avenue who never have to repeatedly check in on a dress, like it's a pet that needs food and water, making sure the right size is still there while waiting for that extra 10 percent drop in price. Watching them shop, I get the sense that they see something beautifully crafted, recognize its value, and buy it on the spot, hassle-free, leaving the hand-wringing to those of us with less disposable income or weaker wills. It looks so liberating. Still, I often wonder if there's an amount of money I could have that would make paying retail feel natural to me. One million bucks in the bank? Somehow I doubt it. The next question I ask myself: What fun would that be?